Appeals court orders dismissal of Maine lobstermen defamation suit against Monterey Bay Aquarium
The First Circuit ruled that a Seafood Watch rating aimed at an entire fishery cannot support a defamation claim by individual lobster businesses.
A federal appeals court has sided with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation in the defamation lawsuit brought by Maine lobster businesses and two fishermen's associations over the aquarium's Seafood Watch program.
In an opinion dated Oct. 9, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed a 2025 district court ruling that had allowed the case to go forward, and sent the case back with instructions to dismiss the complaint. Coverage of the ruling reached Monterey on Oct. 12.
The dispute began in September 2022, when Seafood Watch moved American lobster caught by trap in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank from its yellow rating to its red, or avoid, rating. The program's Sept. 6, 2022 assessment cited risks to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and found the measures in place to reduce entanglement in fishing gear insufficient.
The plaintiffs sued in 2023. They disputed that science and pointed to gear changes the industry has made to protect whales, and the complaint described real commercial harm: one plaintiff, Bug Catcher, Inc., estimated it had lost about 20 percent of its business after the downgrade, and some customers specifically cited the Seafood Watch report when they stopped buying Gulf of Maine lobster. At the dismissal stage, the court accepted those allegations as true for purposes of the motion, which is not a finding that the losses were proven.
The appeal turned on Maine's group defamation rule. Under that rule, a statement about a large group generally cannot support a defamation claim by an individual member unless the statement makes a particular reference to that member. The panel counted about 5,600 lobstermen in Maine alone, and held that a rating covering the whole fishery lacked that particular reference to any one plaintiff, even though it may have affected every member and even though buyers acted on it.
The panel did not decide whether Seafood Watch's conclusions about right whales were correct. What the ruling settles, for now, is who can sue over a fishery-wide rating: an individual business cannot, on these facts, turn a rating aimed at an entire industry into a personal defamation claim.
The plaintiffs can still ask the full First Circuit to rehear the case or petition the U.S. Supreme Court. Their remaining route on the rating itself runs through the Seafood Watch reassessment process and through what they can document for buyers about gear and fishing location.
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